


Stay A Little Longer

by kissoffools, kkzx4



Category: Now You See Me (2013)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-01 21:16:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissoffools/pseuds/kissoffools, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkzx4/pseuds/kkzx4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>J. Daniel Atlas is not the kind of guy who runs errands and takes care of sick people. At least, not usually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stay A Little Longer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kkzx4](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkzx4/gifts).



> Written for [kkzx4](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kkzx4), who's sick and looking for some Jack & Daniel fluff. This maybe ran away with me a little bit. 
> 
> Check out Chapter 2 for an illustration based on this story!

No one lives in apartment 6A. The Horsemen use it as a meeting space, a place to keep their blueprints and go over their plans, to wait for the next message from their leader. Whoever he is. They each rent their own places nearby, because Merritt says he’s too old for roommates and Henley refuses to spend all her free time in close quarters with Daniel. So when the four aren’t working, apartment 6A stands empty.

Which is why, while stopping by to pick up some folders, hearing a weak, “Hello?” from the back bedroom is surprising to Daniel.

“Jack?” he calls, raising his eyebrows.

“Daniel?”

“What are you doing here?” Daniel crosses the rundown living room and pushes open the bedroom door. Jack lays huddled on the bed, feet tucked up under the blanket Henley left during one of their all-nighters. His nose is red, and when he sees Daniel, he sneezes. Daniel eyes him warily. “Are you sick?”

Jack nods pitifully. “Uh huh.”

Daniel leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms. “What are you doing here?”

“I –” He pauses to hack out a terrible cough. “I was going to stay home, but I remembered you needed those files and that I had to bring them back… and then I got here and felt dizzy, and just wanted to lie down for a second, and now…” Jack shrugs sadly, and Daniel can’t help but feel a little bad for him.

Just a little, though. Because he really, really does not deal with sick people.

“Well… thanks for bringing them back,” he says a little awkwardly, holding up the folders. Then he nods. “Feel better.”

He’s turned around and heading back out into the living room when Jack croaks, “Please wait!”

Against his better judgment – this can’t end well, Daniel knows it can’t – he hesitates, and then turns back around.

Jack’s looking up at him with wide, pleading eyes. “Could you – I left my cold meds back at my apartment.”

Daniel blinks at him, and they both stare at each other for a moment. Jack’s gaze is so hopeful, and finally it clicks. “You want me to go get them?” Daniel asks, a little incredulously.

“Please?” Jack says. 

“Why don’t you just go back home to your cold meds?”

Jack groans. “Dude, I feel like shit. I don’t think I can move. My apartment’s a ten-minute walk away and my keys are on the table. Come on.”

Daniel is not the sort of guy that goes running around doing favors for people. “I can call Henley, if you want. She’d come over –“

“You’d actually make her drop her plans, come over here, get the key, go to my place, and come back again?” Jack sneezes, and when he looks up at Daniel again, there’s a judgmental look in his eyes. “You really are a dick.”

Daniel frowns, a little taken aback. “I’m not a dick!”

“Then go get my cold meds.”

For someone practically claiming to be dying of dysentery, Jack’s surprisingly sharp, Daniel thinks. There’s a stare-down for a moment, Jack’s red and watery eyes slowly breaking down his resolve, and finally Daniel sighs.

“Fine, I’ll go get your meds.” 

Jack breaks into a smile and then promptly coughs again, his entire body spasming. “Thank you,” he says once he’s finally gotten himself under control again.

“Yeah, yeah,” Daniel says, already on his way out. “But if I get there and you have any spare change sitting out, I call it.”

***

Jack’s apartment is neater than Daniel is expecting. He’s always seen Jack as sort of young and erratic, a little wild and spontaneous, and sort of expects his home to reflect that. He’s expecting beer bottles on the floor and papers strewn across the coffee table. But aside from the blanket rumpled up at one end of the couch and a couple of tissues here and there – which he is most definitely _not_ touching – the place is tidy. Books organized on the shelf, no clothes tossed on the floor, nothing he’d expect from a single guy in his mid-twenties. He’s actually impressed.

That is, until he goes through into the kitchen.

There are dishes _everywhere_. Piled high in the sink, covering the counter, left on the table itself. The room looks as if it hasn’t seen a sink full of soap in at least a week, and Daniel wrinkles his nose in disgust.

Awful.

He’s intending to just grab the cold meds from the cupboard and get out of there. That’s all he’d promised, after all, and he doesn’t have all day to loiter around Jack’s apartment. Jack can deal with this disaster when he’s well enough to stand up properly.

That’s the idea until he opens the cabinet with the meds and spots the tea sitting next to it. _With echinacea_ , the label reads. _For a sore throat, blocked sinuses, and a cough._

He remembers Jack practically hacking up a lung right there on the bed in apartment 6A, remembers his own mom making him tea for a cold, a long time ago. He remembers the way it soothed his throat, back then, and grabs the box of tea. It would be a nice thing to do, he thinks. A dick definitely wouldn’t do that.

He can bring the tea back to the apartment along with the meds, and Jack can brew it himself. Although he should likely bring a kettle, as well – he doesn’t think the apartment’s bare-bones kitchen actually has one.

And a mug as well, come to think of it.

But no matter how much Daniel hunts for a clean mug in Jack’s cupboards, he comes up empty-handed. There are four mugs on the counter, though, each one with a used tea bag and congealing water sitting at the bottom. It’s disgusting, Daniel thinks.

It won’t take long to wash just one.

But Daniel has always been a precise man, one that takes every task seriously and works to do every job as thoroughly and effectively as possible. He doesn’t half-ass _anything_ , and has always been proud of that fact.

So he isn’t really surprised when he finds himself standing in Jack’s spotless kitchen an hour later. Every dish put away in its proper place – or what Daniel assumes is its proper place, anyway. There wasn’t much left in the cupboard to help him along.

And if he folds the blanket from the couch on his way out, that’s not a big deal. It takes all of five seconds. And the three magazines stacked neatly on the coffee table don’t even appear to have been opened – it just makes sense to tuck those under his arm as he heads out the door with the tea and medication in his hands.

He leaves the crumpled-up Kleenex exactly where he found them, though. Every man has his boundaries.

***

When he makes it back to apartment 6A, he’s ready to dump the tea, the magazines, and the medication at the foot of Jack’s bed and take off. He’s not really sure what came over him back at Jack’s apartment, why he’d suddenly gotten it in his head to tidy up after him. Without being asked, which was even worse. That was practically like _taking care_ of him.

Daniel Atlas does not take care of people.

But when he pushes open the door to the back bedroom, he finds Jack fast asleep. He’s curled up in a ball, blanket drawn up to his chin, and he’s snoring in that loud, stuffy way that sick people do. Daniel knows this is perfect, that he can just drop off the keys and the things from Jack’s apartment and take off without any further questions. No need to bumble through explanations as to why he’d brought tea and magazines, which was a relief. It would be so simple, so ideal, to just dump the things in his arms and leave.

Instead, Daniel goes back into the kitchen and fills up the kettle.

He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, and he mulls over a dozen possibilities as he waits for Jack’s tea to steep. He isn’t sure if he’s growing soft at the ripe old age of thirty, or if he’s just up and gone crazy, but something’s definitely up. Cleaning up after people, running errands for them, making them tea? That is not normal behavior.

Not for Daniel, anyway.

By the time he brings the mug of tea back into the bedroom, he’s decided that he’s likely catching whatever sickness Jack has. And it’s messing with his head. That’s the most likely explanation.

But when he prods awkwardly at Jack’s shoulder to coax him awake, and sees the confused look in Jack’s eyes turn to delight as he notices Daniel standing there with the medication and the tea, Daniel wonders if it isn’t Jack messing with his head, instead.

And he doesn’t think Jack’s doing it intentionally.

“You brought me tea?” Jack croaks, reaching for the mug, and he looks so pleased that Daniel can’t help but soften a little.

“Tell Henley and Merritt, and we’ll be in search of a new fourth Horseman,” Daniel says, biting back a smile.

Jack breathes out a weak little laugh. “Deal.”

Daniel and Jack stay like that for a moment, the mug in Jack’s hands and Daniel crouching next to the mattress, their eyes on each other. Then Daniel clears his throat, shakes his head a little, and stands.

“Feel better,” he says, and turns to head for the door. The last thing he needs is to stick around longer when Jack’s getting into his head like this.

“Danny?” Jack’s voice comes from behind him, quiet and a little timid, and it makes him pause.

“Yeah?”

There’s silence, for a moment, and then – “Will you – could you stay?”

There are a million and one reasons that this is a bad idea, Daniel thinks, and most of them have nothing to do with the germs festering all over Jack at that moment. He knows it would be best to decline, to tell him he has somewhere else to be and get the hell out of there. Keeping people at a distance is what Daniel’s good at – it’s how he operates, and he likes it that way. It’s easier, that way. 

But he makes the mistake of glancing over his shoulder, back at Jack again, and feels his resolve crumble at the hopeful look in his eyes.

“I’m likely already sick,” he says with a sigh, “so why not.”

But Daniel knows he isn’t sick, knows that he’s taking a pretty big risk as he climbs onto the mattress behind Jack and lets Jack lean back against his chest. Jack is warm against him, and even though he’s sniffling and sneezing, Daniel actually likes the feeling.

He’s taking a risk, all right. But it’s one he’s beginning to believe will be worth it.

 

_end._


	2. Art for "Stay A Little Longer"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art based on "Stay A Little Longer" by the talented [kkzx4](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kkzx4/profile)! She was a wonderful person to collaborate with, and it's really exciting to have her illustration to go along with this fic.


End file.
